The above painting is entitled ‘an experiment on a bird in the air pump’. It was done by Joseph Wright of Derby during the Enlightment Age. Nowadays, it can be seen at London’s National Gallery.

I chose this painting because I think it perfectly illustrates the central role science has always played throughout the years. Thus, the scientist appears at the centre and the rest is paying attention to him as a sign of admiration. It also shows the controversy that scientific research tends to stir up. In this particular case, there’s a clear controversial issue: vivisection.
All too often we hear passionate defenders of animals’ rights against particular scientific practice on the grounds that living creatures are undergoing extreme suffering. But, it seems this unethical practice is not going to restrain science’s abuse of vivisection.
I have a strong opinion about this issue which I’d like to share with you all. Without doubt, scientific research focused on animals has brought great benefits to the field of medicine. A good example of this fact is the enormous number of vaccines that scientists have been able to discover. If the studies that have given rise to the several vaccines hadn’t undergone rigorous tests on animals, we wouldn’t have had the chance to prevent illnesses such as hepatitis or meningitis. To my mind, the use of animals in scientific research is acceptable and justified if it can contribute to discovering the cures of life-threatening illnesses or if it can provide insights into obscure diseases.
The trouble is that vivisection is being abused. Just consider the number of cosmetic companies that invest millions of dollars on scientific research to test the quality of new products. I firmly believe that the use of animals in such circumstances is absolutely irrational. Indeed, it’s just not fair to cause animals’ suffering so that we can look a bit more beautiful.
To sum up, I do think that the use of animals for scientific research is agreeable if it’s the way to open the door to medical advances. But, this practice should be regulated so that the suffering of animals for unjustified reasons is avoided altogether.

The role of music in L2

Should we bring music to the classroom?

I’ve been reading some teachers’ comments on the role of music in second language learning. It seems there are two different trains of thought. While some international teachers believe that dealing with songs is a waste of time, others argue that is a wonderful opportunity to enhance learning.

After reading so much theory concerning this aspect throughout my years at TTC, I take the view that songs are a very useful means to foster language acquisition. In the first place, songs can be used to develop listening skills and pronounciation. To focus on the former, it’s important to devise effective activities, and to work on the latter it’s important to raise students’ awareness about the different sounds. Secondly, dealing with songs is a great opportunity for learners to grasp new vocabulary items. I believe that learning vocabulary items in context is what makes dealing with songs such an enriching learning experience. Moreover, songs can be taken as the pathway to teach some grammar points in a meaningful context.

I’d like to reflect now on some other advantages of introducing songs to the classroom which are not so commonly looked at. ‘Songs are encoding of cultural values and ideology’. Therefore, it’d be wise to take advantage of this fact in order to bring a bit of culture to the lessons. When choosing which song to deal with it’d be better if we selected the one that allows us to exploit more cultural aspects. Teaching culture is sometimes reduced to ‘a culture corner’ in textbooks. I’ve always felt sorry about that. Thus, I think any opportunity to expand cultural knowledge should not be missed.

And last but not least, it’s common knowledge that songs can increase learners’ motivation levels. All age groups share an interest in music. In the case of children, this learning experience can be made even more enthusiastic if learners accompany the lyrics with gestures and mimics. When working with adolescents, I think it’s better if we deal with a song that has some message to spread. Generally, teens enjoy putting messages in songs across.

To sum up, I hope you find my reflection on the role of songs useful and entertaining. As a final comment, I’d like to add that when selecting a song we should put ourselves in the learners’ shoes, so that our choices match learners’ interests.

HoW To BeCoMe A SuCcEsSfUl TeAcHeR

Hi girls! This time I’d like to reflect on which the qualities to become a successful teacher are. Here go some keys to achieve this goal:

1. Sense of humour: Sense of humour can help learners see that the learning environment can also be a source of enjoyment. It can help relieve tense classroom situations, and last, it will allow you to persevere in this stressful career. In fact, any task can become more manageable and bearable if we add a touch of humour.
2. A positive attitude: Just tell me one aspect in life which does not benefit from a positive attitude. You can’t find anyone. So, what has led you to think that the teaching profession would be the exception? Far from real! We will be thrown many curve balls all along our career and having a positive attitude would be the best way to face them.
3. Fairness: I bet you all have had an unfair teacher. It’s so frustrating! So, let’s take special care no to be labelled unfair.
4. Consistency: being a consistent teacher means letting learners know what to expect from you each day. This goes hand in hand with setting rules clearly so that learners can adjust themselves to the learning environment successfully.
5. Flexibility: I guess that in today’s world flexibility has become a must in all professions. Make sure we don’t leave the flexible attitude halfway.
6. Patience: is it necessary for me to expand on this point? Any of us who has had any kind of teaching experience knows it by heart.
7. Common sense: yes, common sense. It’s simple but vital. Please don’t ever let it go! It should be kept as a treasure. I have witnessed as a student that loosing your common sense can turn into a tragedy!
8. Don’t take things for granted: this is THE comment made below workshops’ plans, that’s why it may sound a bit of a clichéd. But it’s gospel.

Well, these are just a few keys to take into account and remember every time we’re in front of a classroom. But, surely, there are many more keys to learn as soon as we start to build our careers. And that’s another key: be open to learn. There won’t come a day when we’ll have learnt everything. Every day is a new chance of learning. I believe this is just wonderful and we should take advantage of that!

Homosexuality

Since we’ve been reading about homosexuality, I’d like to give you my opinion over the matter.

With the passing of the recent law, I’ve taken homosexuality seriously for the first time. It was a matter that I completely ignore back then probably because I haven’t met any gay person. But, since our society has taken such step to allow homosexual weddings, I think it’s time we all reflected on the issue.
Personally, I believe any human being, despite of their sexual condition, should be allowed to enjoy the same rights. By saying “I believe” I actually mean that I know it. Whenever I come across two gay people kissing each other in the streets, I feel something which is not precisely wholehearted acceptance. To tell you the truth, I don’t consider myself a discriminatory person, but there must be something of discrimination inside all of us. It’s sort of incoherent, isn’t it?
To my mind, it has become a trend to pretend we are an open-minded society which does not hold prejudices of any kind. However, it seems we need to mature as society a whole lot to accept deep differences among us.
There is another issue related to homosexuality which I’d like to comment on: adoption. This issue appears as the most controversial one. Throughout the last months, I’ve heard a lot of people favouring gay weddings but arguing against adoption by gay couples. In this case, I believe lack of acceptance is not a question of not being open-minded. I’d say it’s just the fear of not knowing the real effect on children after being raised up by same-sex parents. In my opinion, this fear is logical and it should be respected and understood in the same way gay activists wish to be for their sexual condition.
All in all, I believe our society is not ready to face the new law. But we’ll need to find the way to come to grips with today’s reality in the short term so that we can all live in social harmony.

My Experience as a cartoonist

Well, my experience as a cartoonist writer for a couple of hours makes me realize about several things about this job, which, otherwise, I would have never reflected upon. In fact, cartoons are too far away from my life. I’m not keen on reading cartoons, let alone writing them. So, for sure it was a completely new experience.
Anyway, as I said before, I’ve become aware of certain things about this activity and I would like to share them with you:
1) Not only essayist writers or article writers need to be innately gifted, as we all perfectly know, but also cartoonist writer. I’d say it is at least relieving to learn that.
2) There’s something cartoonist and teachers share. I’m talking about creativity. Teachers do need to be creative in doing their job as well as writers. They have to prepare activities, invent new games, resort to different types of classroom management and the like. At the beginning of our careers, I guess this task will be much easier in the sense that we’ll be able to resort to methodologist books which are full of ideas. But, if we are planning to stay in the profession for more than 10 years, then it’ll be necessary for us to exploit our creativity. Let’s be ready for that!
3) Apart form creativity, cartoonist writers need to be wit in order to achieve humour, reflection and so on.
4) Writing cartoons is definitely not my cup of tea!
5) The last thing I’d like to say is that I really appreciate that the web page is easy to handle. It saves nerves!

I’m eager to know what you felt as cartoonist writer. Is someone thinking of abandoning TTC?

My cartoon

21st century women.

T.V: an evil influence on people's behaviour?

In what ways can watching violent programmes on t.v affect people’s behaviour?



T.V: an evil influence on people’s behaviour?

It cannot be denied that the T.V is one of the most popular forms of entertainment. As such, it has far-reaching effects on our lives, especially on our patterns of behaviour. Therefore, more and more people are criticizing the inclusion of violence in TV programmes, denouncing that it makes people become violent and aggressive.

Over the last decades, cartoons and soaps have been showing great violence levels. And surely, the audience’s behaviour hasn’t remained unaffected by this trend. To begin with, we should be aware of the difference between the effect violent media can cause on children and on adults. Children can suffer from more marked and powerful effects than adults due to maturational reasons. Take cartoon heroes. Almost always, these characters get what they want through violence. Since children tend to imitate others’ actions, they will likely resort to the same means in order to achieve their own goals. And this is just logical. They will apply what they have learned from this special teacher: the T.V

What’s more, children cannot tell the difference between the real and the unreal yet. Thus, they tend to believe that violence and aggressiveness are just normal since they belong to the ‘real’ world the TV creates. It goes without saying that violence on the screen can lead a child to be aggressive in their real life.

As for adults, being exposed to too much violence on T.V can turn them into cold-hearted beings. Psychologists claim that once a person gets used to violent actions, he loses the capacity of being moved by violent scenes. Although this impact appears to be less strong than in the case of children, we should reflect on the risks of being that stony.

To sum up, violence on TV programmes can have serious consequences for people. To my mind, we cannot sit back and let the situation become worse. We should tackle the problem before it’s too late. We cannot let children grow into violent adults and adults lose their capacity of being touched by such disgusting thing that violence is.